A contingent from the Lower Columbia Canoe Club runs the Breitenbush River in Oregon at 580 cfs. This video shows only the four drops we stop and scout. The Slot and the Notch are the first two rapids and come early in the run. Miles of fun rapids later we get out and scout the rapid before Woo-Man-Chew and then run it. Only one of our party runs the final big rapid, Woo-Man-Chew. Congrats, Dale.

This is a video of the Lower Columbia Canoe Club’s annual Sweetheart Paddle in February. This year the event was held on the Lewis River, which because of heavy rains was running at 10,000 cfs. The river was big, flat, and moving. The day itself was very wet as the droplets on the camera lens will attest. Be sure to watch to the end to see the first public appearance of the LCCCC–the Lower Columbia Canoe Club Chorus in action.

A group of us caught the Kilchis at a moderate level for a fun day on the river. Level on the nearby Wilson was around 2500 cfs and slowly dropping. The video mostly concentrates on the two class 3 rapids we call Gutter 1 and Gutter 2.

It was a small crowd this year, but we made up for it with lots of excitement on the river and fun back at camp. Not caught on video was the attempt to move a picnic table with a Z-drag. Let’s just say the Forest Service has nothing currently to worry about in terms of losing any picnic tables to us. We need more practice and a better kit. We moved it an inch. Maybe.

When it’s summer in the city, the best place to head is a river. In the last weekend of June, the North Umpqua looked particularly enticing and Michael Allender organized a trip. Twelve LCCC members headed south and paddled several sections. This video only shows us running Boulder, Eiffel Tower and Pinball rapids. Level was 800 cfs.

There’s nothing like Murray for coming up with new runs. This is a surprising 7.5-mile class 1/2 run sandwiched between much harder runs on the Wind. Scenic, relaxing, a nice change of pace. We ran it at 440 cfs, which was a very nice level. We scraped in just a few places. I think 600 cfs would be ideal. There were two or three class 2’s. Unfortunately, the best one was in a rocky gorge and I didn’t get any footage of it because I was upstream shooting people running the lead-in and didn’t know something much better was around the bend. There is a shot of us coming out of the gorge and if you look upstream, you can see some whitewater. For moving water paddlers, my one caution would be there were several places where the main current ran alongside wood–logs. An unskilled paddler could get in trouble in these spots. Everyone in this video was a class III and above paddler and didn’t have any issues with these logs. There was one spot though where the wood and current were tricky enough that two paddlers portaged it. A big thanks to Murray for putting this on the schedule. An equally big thanks for suggesting we convene for a post-paddle conference at the Backwoods Brewery in Carson. Their appropriately titled Logjam IPA is particularly delicious.

This video starts with Karl and John running Cyclops, then the rest of the video consists of runs of Island Rapid on the Dee to Tucker section of the Hood. Folks you’ll see include Eric, Liane, Laurie, Bob, David, Kendall and Jake (in the tandem IK), Ted, and Denny (fresh back from the Grand Canyon). Level was 1075 cfs.

Thirteen of the LCCC’s finest ran the Bull Run at 1250 cfs. This is a short video that just shows one of the early rapids and then the notorious Swingset Rapid. There was some really fine runs. Check out Kevin Lane’s sweet line on Swingset (red kayak at 2:04). Audrey follows with a pretty line of her own–and it’s dry–excellent in a canoe.